


The Boat That Would Row You Back, Carefully

by Isagel



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Aftercare, Bondage, Breathplay, Community: kink_bingo, Dominance/submission, M/M, Painplay, RPF, glam nation tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-02
Updated: 2011-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-17 11:41:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aftercare on the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boat That Would Row You Back, Carefully

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction.

In the morning, Adam pretty much puts him on the bus, a large hand at the small of his back steadying him when he stumbles on the bottom step getting on, a grip on his elbow steering him gently into a seat by the window. Tommy has a vague, faraway notion that he should be embarrassed at being so out of it, but he doesn’t _feel_ embarrassed. He feels open and happy and at peace, and when Adam settles in the seat beside him, stretching his long legs out as much as the cramped bus-space will allow, it’s only natural to curl up against his side, closing his eyes and seeking out the solid warmth of his body. Adam’s arm comes around him, like a blanket wrapping him up, and he rubs his cheek against Adam’s chest, the soft cotton of his shirt, nuzzling deeper into the scent of him.

“Yeah, baby,” Adam says, stroking his upper arm, “just you rest there. I’ve got you.”

He sounds so goddamn happy, too.

  


* * *

  


Tommy dozes off like that (it’s not like he got much sleep at the hotel last night), drifting softly in and out at the familiar sounds of the others getting on the bus, settling in for a day on the road.

“Tommy-boy have a rough night?” Cam asks, her voice coming from above like she’s standing by their seat.

“Depends on your definition of rough,” Adam says, and lingering sensations tumble through Tommy’s mind like the notes of a cord - Adam’s nails on his thighs, Adam’s hand around his throat, the hugeness of Adam’s cock driving into him. He squirms closer, turning his face more fully into Adam’s bulk. Adam’s hand comes up to stroke the mess of his bangs back behind his ear. “He can handle it, though.”

There’s a glow of pride in Adam’s voice that makes Tommy want to fall to his knees at his feet, but Adam’s hand in his hair tells him he’s right where Adam thinks he should be. He wouldn’t move for anything.

“I’m sure he can,” Cam says, and Tommy can hear the friendly mockery in her tone. He’d come up with a clever reply, but he’s drifting back to sleep again before she’s even all the way to her own seat, lulled by the smooth rhythm of Adam’s caress and the first morning purr of the motor as they start to roll.

  


* * *

  


They stop for lunch at a roadside diner, and Tommy is mostly awake by then, settled far enough back into his body that his legs are steady when he walks across the parking lot, and his fingers barely fumble with the fork. He doesn’t wander far from Adam, though, tied to his side as with an invisible string, reaching to touch him, moving to brush their bodies together as soon as they drift apart. Adam sits next to him in the booth and presses his leg against Tommy’s under the table, and maybe the menu was jittering a little in his hands, but the steady contact makes it stop.

When the waitress comes and Tommy orders a salad, Adam glances up from whatever text message he’s typing on his phone and says: “Could you bring an extra side of bread with that?”

Monte gives Adam a look across the table, like he’s laughing at him, but also really not.

“What?” Adam says.

“Nothing,” Monte says. “Just thinking of starting a pool on who’ll take longer to get down from the high, you or the kid.”

Adam looks taken aback for a second, like he’s thinking of being offended, but then his face breaks into a warm laugh. It probably helps that there’s only the three of them in the booth.

“I gotta tell you,” he says, looking over at Tommy, reaching his hand out to brush his hair back from his forehead. “It’s a pretty good high.”

Monte snorts.

“You don’t say.”

Tommy would put in something, but the blue of Adam’s eyes is making him kinda speechless, and then the waitress is there with their drinks.

When the food comes, he realizes that he’s hungrier than he thought. Adam smiles at him when he eats the last of the bread.

  


* * *

  


In the men’s room after the meal, he looks at himself in the mirror. He still looks tired, in a mellow, blurry way, still blissed out. He smiles and shakes his head at his reflection, then turns the faucet on, pulls the sleeves of his sweater up to wash his hands.

As he sticks his hands under the running water, his eyes catch on the marks around his wrists. The traces of the ropes have faded a little, but the pattern is still clearly visible on his wet skin. He wraps the fingers of his right hand around his left wrist, strokes his thumb over the tender bruising at his pulse point.

He falls into the memories like into a river.

The feel of the rope pulling tight as Adam ties the last knot. The strain in his arms as Adam sits back and he tries to follow, tethered to the headboard. The pounding in his chest as Adam slides his palms up along his ribcage, over his nipples, his collarbones, up to wrap his fingers around his neck. The surge of adrenaline and animal fear, pinned there under Adam’s weight, caught by the rope. Helpless. _Easy, baby,_ Adam says. _Easy, now._ His thumb strokes at the hollow of Tommy’s throat; it’s as though he’s touching his pulse directly, with no skin between. _You know it’s all right to give it up, you know you can._ Tommy tilts his head back, arcs his jugular into the press of Adam’s hands. Shaking. Letting go. All there is is freedom. The safety to be free.

“Hey, baby,” Adam says, his voice soft as if not to startle. Tommy looks around to see him standing at the entrance, the door just falling shut behind him. “We’re about ready to head out.”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “I’m coming. I just…”

His eyes drift down to his wrists again, to the perfect pattern of the marks.

Adam comes closer, stepping up behind him and reaching his arm around to turn the water off. Tommy leans back against him, breathing out.

Adam takes his wrists in his hands, tracing the fading marks with his thumbs. Turns them over so that he can do the same on the other side.

“Gorgeous,” he pronounces, inspection over, and Tommy hums his assent. Adam wraps his arms around him, and Tommy wraps his arms around Adam’s. He likes the way they look in the mirror, the way they fit. “So you went pretty deep last night,” Adam says, and he’s keeping his voice neutral, but there’s concern in it.

Tommy shivers in his arms, remembering. Deep doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“You always take me places I want to be going,” he says, ducking his head a little, because, God, that’s cheesy, that’s a really embarrassingly cheesy thing to say.

Adam smiles, though; his bare, freckled face in the mirror cracking into the most breathtaking grin, like Tommy couldn’t have said anything more perfect.

“Always, baby,” he says, placing a kiss on the sensitive spot behind Tommy’s ear. “Always.”

Tommy arcs his neck without thinking, exposing the line of his throat to Adam’s mouth.

  


* * *

  


They’re all more awake for the second half of the coach ride, and Adam is, well, _vibrant_. He gets into a jam session with Longineu, just the complex beat of the bongo drums Longineu keeps on the bus and Adam’s voice weaving the melody, threading in and out of familiar songs and wordless improvisations, the music not vocal as much as instrumental. It’s beautiful and unexpected and interesting, and Tommy curls up in his seat to listen while he skims through the latest issue of _Rolling Stone_ , sideways with his feet beneath him and his shoulder to the backrest, so that he only has to glance up to see Adam sitting on the edge of a seat opposite, his leg swaying with the rhythm, or roaming the aisle when he is moved to sing with his entire body.

Whenever Adam comes past him, there are fingers in Tommy’s hair, a hand squeezing the back of his neck. He still has the urge to press himself against Adam’s body, to cling to him, to curl up at his feet and bury his face in his lap, but the need has faded enough not to be a necessity, and Adam’s brief touches are enough to hold him together.

While Longineu plays a whirlwind solo spun out of something that might have started as a Cream song before it mutated, Adam shimmies over to the fridge and grabs a bottle of water, comes back with a second one that he holds out to Tommy. Tommy takes it, and Adam gives him an encouraging smile, standing over him as he unscrews the cap and drinks. When he lowers the bottle, Adam leans down, lips to his ear, and says,

“Good boy.”

It’s the same words he used this morning, holding a glass to Tommy’s lips when his own hands, just untied, shook too much not to spill.

Tommy turns his head, catching Adam’s gaze.

“Thanks,” he says, meaning it, close enough to surfacing now, maybe, that he consciously understands all the things he’s thankful for, and why.

Adam smiles that big smile again, and ruffles his hair. Then he’s spinning on his heel, turning back to Longineu.

“Come on, drummer-man, give me something I can work with, here.”

“Not up to the challenge, Lambert?” Longineu says, but the frantic beat slows, anyway, and slows further, morphing into the soft, languid rhythms of a bossa nova, too sultry for words.

Adam laughs, bright and surprised and delighted, catching himself against the overhead luggage shelf when the bus turns and lurches, and then his voice is a low, wordless melody, all smoke and seduction, his hips underlining every phrase to make it a parody. There’s laughter from stray places around the bus, and a wolf whistle from one of the girls.

In the seat in front of Tommy, Monte puts down the book he’s reading and turns to look.

“You know,” he says to Tommy, both of their eyes still on Adam, “I always like who he is on days like this. I think maybe because they’re the days when he likes himself best.”

Tommy thinks about that for a while, turning the water bottle around in his hands.

“He likes having someone to take care of,” he says.

Monte opens up his book again.

“He likes being able to give someone the things they really need,” he says, as if there’s a difference.

Tommy thinks about that, too, but he isn’t sure he gets it.

  


* * *

  


In the end, of course, they get to where they’re going, and there is work to do. Soundchecks and tuning and run-throughs to familiarize themselves with the stage, and Tommy sees Adam practically the entire time, but they’re both professionals, and this is what they do for a living. It’s a different headspace. There’s a level of focus he needs for this, a standard he sets himself to, and when he reaches for it, it’s surprisingly easy to find. Easier than yesterday, or the day before. The wear and tear of the weeks on the road somehow brushed away.

He plays an improv on the bass after he’s replaced the worn E-string, letting the music shape itself under his hands as it wants to, letting his fingers run with it, and his heart. When he’s done and looks up, Adam is on the other side of the stage, talking to Brooke and Taylor, but his eyes are on Tommy. His expression is so pleased, it makes Tommy duck his head and blush.

  


* * *

  


They’re in the culvert leading up to the stage, waiting there, only minutes to go before the show, when Adam comes up to him. He’s all skin-tight pants and glitter now, just a bit larger than life, and something in Tommy’s chest drops at the sight of him, the way it always does. Or maybe more than always. Anyway, he’s glad he’s got the wall at his back to lean against.

Adam looks him up and down, his gaze beneath the heavy layers of mascara appreciative, yes, but something different, too. The weight of it feels like the touch of his fingers on Tommy’s wrists in the diner bathroom. He doesn’t touch, now, though, although Tommy can tell he would want to, his hands restless at his sides. There is a clear space between them where they stand, Adam for once keeping outside the boundaries Tommy has never really had with him.

“You ready?” he asks.

Tommy nods.

“Yeah,” he says.

Adam bends forward a little, tilting his head, the motion bringing him down to Tommy’s level, letting him catch and hold Tommy’s gaze.

“Yeah?”

From up in the arena, Tommy can hear the audience, can _feel_ them already, a sea of anticipation and excitement, knows that Adam can feel them, too, the building surge, ready to become the wave of love and desire that will sweep him up and carry him through the night. And with a sudden clarity, he knows that Adam’s question is for real. That if Tommy’s answer was ‘no’, he would find a way to put all that on hold, to make it keep until Tommy _was_ ready.

He doesn’t know why that surprises him. It’s not like he doesn’t know Adam.

“Yeah,” he says, smiling, and this time it’s not a rote answer. “I’m good.”

Adam studies him for a moment longer.

“Okay,” he says, straightening with a smile of his own. “Good. Let’s rock ‘n roll.”

Tommy laughs.

“I can’t believe you just said that.”

Adam winks at him, the very definition of camp.

“You just watch me, baby. I’ll make a believer out of you yet.”

Tommy’s pretty sure they passed that point miles ago.

  


* * *

  


It’s one of their better shows, he knows that from the moment they step on the stage. Adam’s joy and energy from the afternoon carries through into his performance, pulls every one of them along, and Tommy himself feels synced and connected to the music on that deepest level he never finds the words to describe, the way he’s connected to the force and flow of Adam’s voice, to the position of Adam’s body in space.

It’s only when they’re well into the intro to “Fever” that he realizes that maybe Adam was right to be concerned. The beat is all around him, playing out beneath his fingers, vibrating under his feet, and then Adam’s voice is filling it with all the meaning that runs between the two of them, and Adam is there, touching him, wrapping around him; his arm around Tommy’s shoulders, claiming and protective.

For a second, it’s all too much – the intimate smell of Adam’s body, the weight of his gloved hand, the ecstatic roar of the audience, the throbbing of the music, all of it punched through with Tommy’s memories from last night, with the sensation of floor boards hard under his knees, the skin of Adam’s thigh warm against his cheek, with his complete sense of gratitude and bliss at being allowed to kneel and worship, being made to fall so low. All of it too overwhelming, and he bends his head, lowers his gaze, losing himself in the ocean deep of it, his hands faltering on the strings.

He isn’t lost though, because Adam’s lips can find his, dip down to find them open and waiting, and the kiss is warm tonight, gentle, Adam’s fingers squeezing tighter around his shoulder, and when Adam straightens, it’s easy to follow, to lift his head in pursuit of breath and tongue and let Adam raise him up, guide him back to the surface.

It lasts only the briefest of moments, but when Adam pulls away, drawn by the demands of the choreography, Tommy knows that he can stand on his own. The depths below are still there, but he has the strength now not to sink. Adam will never let go of him until he is where he needs to be.


End file.
